


When Has The Earth Ever Missed An Orbit?

by SapphireSue



Category: Arctic Monkeys, The Beatles
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-02
Updated: 2015-01-02
Packaged: 2018-03-05 00:51:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3098858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SapphireSue/pseuds/SapphireSue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was something flawed about the entire soul bonding thing that apparently everyone else didn’t experience.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When Has The Earth Ever Missed An Orbit?

**Author's Note:**

> IDK what I was doing. I woke up at 1 AM and I listened to Across the Universe and BAM! This shit hit my head like a fucking bat. I don't know where I'm going with this but expect it to be short af.
> 
> Unbeta'd, no hate plox.

When the radio stopped playing ‘Horrors of the Forest’ and the radio hosts started talking about ‘soul mates’, John instantly became a firm disbeliever of said topic. He snorted at how Paul would lean closer to the radio whenever the topic was brought up, sometimes smiling, daydreaming about the day when his marks would appear and lead him to his destined girl.

 

It wasn’t always a girl, though. There had been a report—the grimmer side of the heart-fluttering concept of soul bonds—that said two men had been caught together, in the obvious sense, and claimed they were bonded. They showed their marks, names clear and dark against their pale wrists. When they refused the insistent order of the government for them to kill themselves, they had been sentenced to death. Despite their pleas to be hung side by side, they were scheduled for different dates. The next day after one man had been hung, people crowded around the nearest television sets or radios, some scowling while the others cried in fear. The other man had died from asphyxiation on the same day, untouched, lying on his side in the jail cell.

 

The chief police officer had been screamed at, struggled to calm the surrounding people as he came up with bent reasoning that gay soul mates was not real, that the second man merely choked himself. People, though a bit doubtful, believed him immediately. They agreed, and the possible unrest had been avoided. The chief police officer reassured the crowd that their children would be safe, and this ‘disease’ would eventually fade away.

 

The police, the news, and the government were good at masking the truth. A few years subsequent to the report, there had been several gay couple jailed and hung, all claiming to be bonded. They held proof, names written on different parts of their body, vibrant and real. They all matched, each couple adorning each others names on the same body part. They were all hung and the police refused to spare them a chance for a few last words. Their faces appeared on television and newspapers, but their bonds were covered up, left unsaid and only believed as rumours that were passed around over dining tables and neighbouring houses.

 

John admitted he was a bit curious about the entire concept of soul bonding, but unlike Paul, he didn’t waste his time listening to reports and burying his nose in books about it. Whatever he heard was enough and he refused to dig deeper. George was similar to him; what he got was enough and if he got more then he’d add that to his knowledge. He didn’t think too deeply about it, until a few years later, where his words appeared on his hip. He freaked out while Paul congratulated him. It wasn’t a surprise that he and Pattie had gotten a divorce. She’d already seen his words, traced her fingers on them, waited for when the woman named Olivia would come along.

 

Paul had been a mix of being overjoyed and being envious of his band mates, when Ringo’s words appeared a while after George’s did. John congratulated them but shook his head and scowled when they used their soul bond as an excuse for their infidelity. He scolded them, hands twitching and the urge to smack their heads upside down took a lot to control. He wasn’t that faithful to his own wife, anyway. Then Paul woke up one day in America, his words burning against his collarbone, and he thought it was only right to take a stroll outside until he met the woman whose name was carved on his skin.

 

When John had met Yoko, he was convinced that she was the one. He’d never believed all that soul bonding bullshit until she was standing in front of him, his name a messy scribble on the back of her hand. He’d been worried because his words had yet to appear, but she told him that hers had and it was all that mattered. He took her hand in his and agreed. They got married and he loved her, words be damned.

 

He’d gotten into fights with Paul very often after that. The air had been thick and tense around them, clouding around their instruments, muffling the sounds and making their music less coordinated. His patience grew thinner every day, and sometimes he’d just snap at anyone for no apparent reason. He heard George mumble something about him being on menopause and he almost lost it, if Yoko hadn’t been there to hold his arm. But as each day passed, her touch lost its warmth. He found himself staring at her words, sometimes glancing at Paul’s whenever it was visible.

 

One night he and Yoko lied down on their bed. He took her hand and traced a thumb over her words. He did it twice, then paused.

 

She lied to him.

 

It wasn’t a mark, it was a tattoo. He was sure of it. He dragged his fingers along it. The words shouldn’t protrude; they shouldn’t feel like anything at all. They were _marks_ , like birthmarks or bruises or even ink pen. He knew because he’d felt his mother’s words before, felt Paul’s and even Cynthia’s. He’d read about it before in a newspaper, heard it in the radio and seen it on the television. _It wasn’t supposed to feel like anything._

 

He knew Yoko was worried, looking up at him and opening her mouth to speak, but he held her in his arms that night. He married and loved her. That was all that matters.

 

“We are bonded by love and not by words.” Yoko once told him when he had his thumb along her tattoo again. 

 

It took him a while to reply.

 

“We don’t need them. I never believed their bullshit anyway,” and kissed the tattoo.

 

They lied like that quite often. John curled behind her, taking her hand and stroking his thumb on her tattoo. There were times he wished it was a real mark, wished he had her name on the back of his own hand. He wished they were destined together by the pull and the burn of their marks, wished he had felt an urge to do something to meet her like Paul told him he did. Perhaps he never believed in them, but it soon crumbled away and he just felt like the entire world hated him. Suddenly their apartment in New York lost its comfort, the same way Yoko’s hand stopped feeling warm.

 

One day he had been walking back, thoughts leaning more on the nearing of New Years rather than Christmas. It made his leg itch for some reason. When he touched it, though, it burned. He stopped in his tracks, not caring if he was standing in the middle of the doorway. He pressed his fingers against his leg again, and like earlier, it burned. The first thing he thought, despite it being utterly ridiculous because he was 40 years old, was that his words finally appeared.

 

And then he heard gunshots.

**Author's Note:**

> So how was it huh? (imagine how pissed off John is lmfao)
> 
> Also the 'Horrors of the Forest' isn't an actual thing. I made it up. My mum used to tell me about how technology in our country used to be so shit that we didn't have TVs, just radios. So there were programs in radios, people voice acting and stuff. It's basically that. I didn't do any research here, so if there's something completely idiotic up there then I'm really sorry about that. I don't know on what extend did the homophobia in the '60s went, but if I've been listening to my brother's rants correctly, homosexuality was illegal and the government actually asked gay people to kill themselves or they will be sentenced to death. I don't know about hanging, though. Also, the thing about unrest... People can get scared, you know? Like written up there, they're fearing for their children and people tend to make actions whenever they're scared of what may happen to them and their children.
> 
> ALSOOO. THE TATTOO. Let's just pretend that tattoos are slightly raised here. okay? please i just found out i dont wanna rewrite uhghghh
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> .  
> .  
> .
> 
> In all honesty I've been meaning to write a John/Al fic but it's just so fucking stupid, right? But then I thought, I've read a fic about John/Elvis. So why the fuck not? Besides, it's just kind of...idk, cool? Different?  
> It's really great that I'm going back to writing mode again. Expecting a lot of late night writing in the future. Jesus, right when school is about to resume.


End file.
